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Thursday, March 3, 2016

Biology Lab Paper

For my biology lab this semester I had to pick a plant to research and write its autobiography. I chose to do a dandelion. It was pretty enjoyable to write so I thought I'd post it here just for fun.

Taraxacum Officinale: My Life
on the Hit List

From the beginning, I suspected life
would be tough. As a young seed, I was blown far from my family. While about a fifth of my
siblings landed close to our mother, my pappus took me far from home -not to
mention I was forced from my mother with a good deal of spit from some rotten
human child. Thankfully, I managed to land on a moist plot of soil. There, I
was greeted by a large family by the name of Poaceae.
To my delight, a caring young man would drench us with a refreshing burst of
water from a snake-like tube and croon encouraging words each evening. With
such welcoming treatment, I quickly brushed aside my initial feelings of
trepidation and sprouted after only eight weeks. I became an adorable little
rosette.

Not long after, I
bloomed. I had been working hard to create as many florets as possible into a
little golden package of sunshine and was quite pleased with the results. That
evening, I waited in anticipation for my friendly gardener to notice my beaming
face. I had seen him exclaim excitedly over some snapdragons not that long ago
and couldn’t wait to hear similar praise. His reaction was like nothing I had
imagined. I know not what I did, but I got the distinct sense that the man was peeved
with my presence. This inkling was probably due to his incensed behavior which
included swearing about some lost "best yard award" and multiple
doses of poison with which he tried to drown me. My root had grown quite deep
by then and I was able to cling onto life. Now of course, all this did not have
the best effect on my self-esteem. I turned away my face in shame each evening
and curled up out of view the best I could when I saw him coming with the
watering. Even this did not detour him, however, and he comforted himself with
ruthlessly chopping the entire lawn down whenever I dared to lift my head. Yet,
I still lived on. While his attempts to kill me had been unsuccessful, he had
unintentionally killed some of my surrounding neighbors in the attacks. No, he
was not pleased, but neither was I. I could handle his bullying myself, but I
would not allow the Poaceae to suffer as well. It was time to strike back.

I was able to make
contact with some fellow dandelions in a nearby ditch. Well, it actually turned
out to be just one dandelion, but this chap had perfected a cloning process
called apomixis. I figured if I could spread
myself across the yard, the human would give up. I quickly learned all I could
of the process and decided cloning was my best chance of winning the war. There
was only one problem with this plan that I could see. I needed time without
that man trying to kill me. If I could keep my head from being chopped off long
enough, I would be able to produce cypsela that would turn into my exact copy.
Unfortunately, the killer of all things Taraxacum never gave me enough
time. I had to be patient. Surely one day he would have to leave for an
extended period of time. I could only hope that time would not be during the
winter.

Later that summer, I was given my
chance. The human packed his belongings and drove away. I hoped this would give
me enough time to propagate myself across the man's lawn and several of the
neighboring yards. Once I had a head full of flowers (about 200 of them) it
would only take me a few days to spread. I grew my cypsela as quickly as I could.
When I was finished, a convenient breeze blew my experiment throughout the yard
and onward. I had succeeded.

The problem with success is that
without one with whom to share it (or to rub it into his face) there isn’t
much of a point besides a bit of inner satisfaction. The young man never came
back. Without him, I found myself (or rather myselves) scattered over more
ground than I truly needed and without further purpose. No one admired my
blooms, and apoximis seemed to take over my life. I produced flower after
flower and grew in number.

This continued uneventfully for
about two years (though I slept in the winter). Then one day my overgrown
jungle was stumbled upon by an older woman with long, scraggly hair. She walked
up to me and gently caressed my golden puff.

“Hello, aren’t you pretty?” she said
with a smile. I, unaccustomed to such praise,
shyly bowed my head in acknowledgment. Here was someone who actually cared!

“Yes, you’ll do just fine,” she
nodded. To my horror, she pinched my head off and unceremoniously wiped my
white, milky innards upon her hidden wart. I wish I could tell you she stopped
there, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about cloning, it’s that it makes
you susceptible to multiple abuses rather than “one and done.” This witch went
around plucking each of my blossoms and even as far as digging up my roots and
pulling out my leaves. The whole time she went on mumbling “vitamin A” and
something about helping her liver. For me, this was it -I had had it. Though
perhaps I shouldn’t have, I grew bitter. I made myself prickly and
thick-skinned and decided I was done with trying to be happy.